Leader Of The Pack Artic Wolf First Of Family To Settle At Game Preserve

ECO WATCH

"It's an unforgettable sound," said Brent Blickensderfer, animal care supervisor, opening a gate leading to the newest exhibit at the Trexler-Lehigh County Game Preserve.

"It's kind of eerie."

But the howling, Blickensderfer said, is also "a good sign" -- one that means Spirit, an Arctic wolf, is taking well to his new home.

For the time being, the two-year-old Spirit is a lone wolf, as he roams a newly created 30,000-square-foot habitat at the preserve outside Schnecksville.

However, game preserve officials intend to have him joined soon by two wolf pups already at the preserve and an adult female who should arrive sometime this summer.

Tony Mazziotta, game preserve director, said that will make the county-run preserve one of only a handful of places in the United States to display a family-like grouping of Arctic wolves, a subspecies of the gray wolf whose native habitat lies mostly above the Arctic Circle.

He expects the wolves to draw a pack of interest.

"There's an unbelievable number of people interested in wolves," he said. "They have an amazing following."

According to Mazziotta, the four wolves were donated to the preserve earlier this year by the Lakota Wolf Preserve in Columbia, N.J., where owners Dan and Pam Bacon maintain more than 20 tundra, Arctic, gray and timber wolves, including offspring.

The couple invite the public, for a fee, to view and photograph the wolves in the natural setting their privately run facility in northern Warren County provides.

Mazziotta said Dan Bacon decided to donate the wolves after he visited the game preserve about two years ago and was impressed by the physical facilities and the potential for the wolves to be used in educational programs.

Plans are for the creatures to become a permanent exhibit and part of the preserve's focus on North American wildlife, Mazziotta said.

Information about them also is being included in programs for the approximately 20,000 schoolchildren who visit the game preserve annually.

"Unfortunately, in the future, this may be the only way anybody will know what a wolf looks like," she said.

"What we want people to learn is that they're not the Big Bad Wolves, that they kill for survival, and they have a role to play in the ecosystem," Mazziotta said.

Linda Alysworth, spokeswoman for the International Wolf Center in Ely, Minn., said the Arctic wolf is one of the few wolves not considered threatened or endangered.

"In most areas where they exist, there are very few humans, so there has not been a lot of discussion about about whether they are endangered, or if they have habitat issues," Aylsworth said.

She said most of what is known about Arctic wolves, also known as white wolves because of their light-colored coats, has come from recent studies.

Some were done by biologist Dan Mech, who is affiliated with the center and spent 10 years living among and photographing the animals on Ellsmere Island off Greenland, Aylsworth said.

One of the scientists' findings is that human contact with Arctic wolves has been so rare that the animals, normally a reclusive species, did not fear people.

Scientists say Arctic wolves typically live in packs, with a dominant male. Smaller and lighter than some other wolves, Arctic wolves feed on caribou by hunting cooperatively and are strong enough to bring down an adult with a single bite to the neck.

Some experts believe the subspecies may be limited to as few as 1,500 animals, concentrated in Greenland and Queen Elizabeth, Banks and Victoria islands in northern Canada. Another 2,000 or so of another subspecies live on Baffin Island.

Adult arctic wolves grow to 2 to 3 feet high and 4-1/2 to 6-1/2 feet long and weigh 70 to 120 pounds.

Mazziotta said Spirit and the expected female wolf are not hand-tame. They were raised in captivity and not taken from the wild, he said.

Still, preserve officials incorporated many precautions in the design of the new wolf habitat. Both the needs of the animals and the safety of spectators were considered, he said.

The habitat includes a hillside, a rocky area, a brook and a waterfall and more than two dozen full-size trees to provide shade and seclusion. Mazziotta said he expects the wolves will use part of the rocky area of the habitat under the the trees to build a den.

Because canines often patrol the fringe of their territory, he said, the habitat features a channel of water along the edge closest to where spectators will view the wolves.

Rocks and plantings also separate the animals from spectators, who are confined behind a wire mesh window in a log-cabin-like structure.

An 8-foot-high chain-link fence with a 2-foot extension surrounds the habitat, and the area also is equipped with an electrical fence that delivers a mild shock if the animal gets too close.